New from Cambridge University Press!

Edited By Keith Allan and Kasia M. Jaszczolt

This book "fills the unquestionable need for a comprehensive and up-to-date handbook on the fast-developing field of pragmatics" and "includes contributions from many of the principal figures in a wide variety of fields of pragmatic research as well as some up-and-coming pragmatists."

From a synchronic point of view, the various accentuation systems found inthe Baltic and Slavic languages differ considerably from each other. Wefind languages with free accent and languages with fixed accent, languageswith and without syllabic tones, and languages with and without adistinction between short and long vowels. Yet despite the apparentdiversity in the attested Baltic and Slavic languages, the sources fromwhich these languages have developed – the reconstructed languages referredto as Proto-Baltic and Proto-Slavic respectively – seem to have had verysimilar accentuation systems.

The prehistory and development of the Baltic and Slavic accentuationsystems is the main topic of this book, which contains sixteen articles onBaltic and Slavic accentology written by some of the world’s leadingspecialists in this field.